Wayne Wang has solidified his reputation as one of the world's pre-eminent Asian-American filmmakers over the past three decades, directing features such as The Joy Luck Club, Smoke and Maid in Manhattan. So it is with great pleasure that we announce today, in partnership with Cinetic Media and Magnolia Pictures, the world premiere of his new film, The Princess of Nebraska, in the YouTube Screening Room.

Along with its recently theatrically-released companion film, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Princess of Nebraska explores issues of Chinese identity in the modern world. Using digital cameras, the film chronicles 24 hours in the life of a young, pregnant Chinese woman as she struggles with the most difficult of decisions.

To celebrate the premiere, we'll also be featuring three shorts from up-and-coming Asian filmmakers in the YouTube Screening Room. "The Tired City," from Hong Kong, is the animated story of a woman pushed to the breaking point by her job. In the "The Chestnut Tree," the director uses hand-drawn animation to recount memories of life with her mother in Korea. Finally, in the Japanese film "Scab," a young student tries to finish his homework, but the giant wound on his tutor's lip is making it a little hard to focus.

One thing to note -- because of distribution restrictions, The Princess of Nebraska is only available to users in the United States. Our sincere apologies in advance if this precludes you from watching.

24 comments
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Very disappointed by this. Youtube's unique size and pre-eminence as a short video distribution channel gives it the leverage to refuse to artificially segment the internet into geographic markets. Viewers outside the US (a potential market orders of magnitude larger than the US) constantly run into these arbitrary licensing restrictions. They've become a defacto DRM for web video. I'd urge Youtube not to go down this road, which frustrates users, and normalises the concept of geographically specific censorship.

I'll first say that I completely understand if there are distribution restrictions - however, what I am disappointed by is global feature. And if they had to feature it this way, why not put a line in the feature list saying "only available to US viewers" rather than getting us all interested and then blocking us??